The Fly (Archie Comics)
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The Fly is a superhero published by Archie Comics. He was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as part of Archie's "Archie Adventure Series", later camped up as part of their Mighty Comics line.
Tommy Troy was an orphan hired by Ben (aka Ezra) and Abigail March. Late one night, he tried wearing a ring with a fly-shaped emblem he found in their attic. The Marchs were wizards, and the ring summoned Turan, one of the Fly People.
Turan explained that, ages ago, the Fly People ruled the Earth. They used magic in their wars, in the ultimate one of which they reduced most of their population to common houseflies. Only a few Fly People managed to escape to another dimension, where they waited for "one person... pure of heart" to fight crime and greed, which were their own downfall. Tommy was that person. By rubbing the ring and saying "I wish I were the Fly," he exchanged bodies with the other dimension and became a costumed adult superhero. To return to his own identity, all he had to do was utter his name.
In the first 4 issues of The Fly, Tommy was a boy. After Simon and Kirby left the title, others took on the character, and made him an adult (a lawyer), fighting crime in Capital City. He would later be partnered with Flygirl. His title would later be cancelled, then restarted as "Fly-Man" and camped up as the founding member of The Mighty Crusaders, a superhero group that appeared in Archie's Mighty Comics and later in their Red Circle Comics line.
Adventures of The Fly lasted for 30 issues. The Fly also appeared in short stories in some of Archie's other titles (Pep #151, 154, 160 and Laugh #128, 129, 132, 137-139). Fly-Man lasted #31-39.
During the Red Circle Comics period, the Fly got his own title that lasted 9 issues, from May, 1983 thru October, 1984. The stories were more similiar to the previous stories in Adventures of The Fly, and co-starred Flygirl. Starting in issue #5, Steve Ditko did both story and art, having a storyline with Tommy Troy being framed and discredited. After Ditko left the strip with #8, others wrapped up the storyline in #9, having Troy's name being cleared.
The Fly would be one of the characters used in DC Comics revamp of the Archie characters in their !mpact comics line, and would be the least changed of all the characters.
Most recently, the rights to the character have apparently reverted to Joe Simon, but Archie is allowed to reprint the old stories. They have done so with a recent graphic novel published under the Red Circle line, which reprinted the first four issues.
External Links
- Fly's entry in International Catalog of Superheroes (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/f/fly.htm)
- Fly's entry in Toonopedia (http://www.toonopedia.com/fly.htm)
- Joe Simon's website (http://www.simoncomics.com/)